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Month: September 2017

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I used to dance in the shower when I knew I was getting ready to go and see you–sometimes, not all the time (I’m not completely deranged). I don’t know how I didn’t slip and fall and break something because I was into it, man. I don’t dance, not even when blackout drunk, but I used to when I had you to look forward to. I did it because often that was the only happiness I had.

I don’t dance in the shower anymore. And you don’t make me happy anymore, so I suppose that’s fair.

There are ten billion impossible words I could pin down that I’ve thought since December. I have written drafts of letters and dispatches and grossly overdone novelizations of every fleeting emotion I’ve experienced since then. I have gone in verbal circles with friends and loved ones, extolling the passions of a broken heart in the way you would expect someone to do over their first lost love.

Yes, I should have known all along that it was one-sided. I can’t think back on the past year without feeling taken advantage of, though I don’t think so cruelly of you as to assume it was your intent. I don’t think I would have loved you if you were evil, though love did blind so many of your faults that now I wonder how it blossomed at all. Alas there is no logic to love, despite my trying to cram it into the boxes I believed it should reside.

And I suppose, when I’m being honest with myself late at night, I did know all along that things would Not End Well. I felt things in my gut that my waking mind refused to process until they were laid bare before me. I knew something was up.

I don’t wait for you to speak to me every day anymore.
I don’t base my entire mood on whether or not we interact.
I don’t feel crushing anxiety when we don’t talk.
I don’t go through periods of self-hate when things don’t “go right” and I fail to make you happy. To please you.
I don’t experience intense jealousy when you pay attention to someone else.
I used to love you, but I’ve forgotten how.

What were burdens have become gifts because I have finally been forced to face my biggest fears: rejection and change.

I’d be lying if I claimed I wasn’t still angry. I am, and I think the distance between us is necessary, though I know you’d like for things to be different. I don’t want things to be any different than they are right now.

I am so glad that this mess has unraveled the way it has because, for the first time in my adult life, I feel free of the responsibility of worrying about you and your well-being. I feel free of the insecurity that comes with making another human being the center of one’s universe. I am free of the harsh self-judgments and negative thinking patterns that plagued my life for far too fucking long. I respect myself for perhaps the first time in my life, and I would go through what I’ve gone through over and over and over to discover this hidden reservoir of strength that I never knew existed.